Please do not jump out of of your 5-story building after reading the alarming post title. The world ain’t over just yet. In fact, I have some great news to share with you. As of Tuesday, December 15, 2009, I officially renew my journey for blogging greatness and transition over to a self-hosted blog. With three weeks off for winter vacation, I feel that the time is ripe. No doubt. It is a big leap of faith.

Yes, you have guessed correctly. I’m divorcing from wordpress in my url and heading my separate ways. No, it was not due to numerous random affairs with super-hot women. In fact, I sincerely enjoyed my three-month marriage with WordPress. It was an amazing experience and a true eye-opener. I have discovered a new passion in writing, an area I have long overlooked for many reasons. In addition, I absolutely love learning about new technologies and pointing out to unsuspecting people that the internet and the world wide web are not the same thing.

Of course, I have taken into account the numerous obstacles ahead. As a college student, time is never a sure thing. Having recently gone through my first college finals, I realize my ability to manage my time is definitely key to maintaining a healthy and successful blog. (Though my business professor and Stephen R. Covey may respectfully disagree with that last statement)

Then there is the issue of money. Carrying a limited existence on the web without the continued payment of money to the greedy web hosts and domain registries, I understand that things are not going to be the same anymore. But with the possibility of success, one must take risks. Sometimes leaving your comfort zone and saying, “I’m not scared anymore!” is what you need to propel yourself to fulfilling goals and develop personally. Running a blog with tremendous content has crossed my mind constantly throughout every day. Now, I am ready to place my plan into action.

The most troubling obstacle I have long pondered is the possibility for the “bloggers’ burnout.” What if I one day sit in front of my computer ready to blog, and have nothing to write? I’m certain every blogger, even the successful ones, have faced this problem. As my 5th grade teacher always said, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” I intend to entertain my readers. I hope to educate people about topics that interest me. I want people to tell there friends and family and neighbor’s cat how wonderful LonePlacebo is. I have many hopes and dreams for LonePlacebo. I’m sure that this will be one heckuva ride. Thanks for reading!

It has finally hit me. The burn-out. And I haven’t even reached the expected six-month kill off point. FML.

During the three months here at the cozy, cost-free confines of WordPress, I have enjoyed the knowledge of knowing that there was absolutely no financial burden sitting on my shoulders. Without self-hosting a blog, I didn’t have to pay a dime. That was fine with me… three months ago.

The Weekly Placebo is a conglomerate of photos, videos, news stories, and other interesting material around the Web. The content is discovered primarily through Digg and StumbleUpon, social news sites displaying the most popular articles online. If you come across something interesting worth sharing, contact me or leave a comment on this post with a link and description.Read more…

The Green Bay Packers were devastatingly humiliated by the winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday, as rookie quarterback Josh Freeman threw for three touchdowns and 205 yards. Freeman became the youngest quarterback to start for Tampa Bay and helped end an NFL-worst losing streak of 11 games. Drafted in the first round as the 17th overall pick and the third quarterback behind Matthew Stafford and Mark Sanchez, Freeman gave Buccaneers fans a reason to hope for better times in the future.

This morning, we learned that Fortune magazine named Steve Jobs as its CEO of the Decade. It is a tremendous honor and much deserving to such an individual. His innovation and brilliance has brought us the incredible iPod, iTunes music store, and iPhone. So what did the Apple CEO had to say about all of this? Luckily, Steve himself was kind enough to spend some of his precious time to write an email to LonePlacebo. Here now is the full, unaltered copy of the message:Read more…

Electronic Art’s much anticipated RTS classic Command & Conquer: Red Alert arrived at the App Store today, retailing for $9.99. A lot of questions were raised prior to its release regarding the game’s controls on a touch screen device. Based on early App Store reviews averaging at 4 and 1/2 stars, the issue does not appear to be a concern.

“Hey, where the hell is the toilet paper?”

Having relieved yourself after eating that god-awful Sloppy Joes for dinner, you reach toward the toilet paper dispenser. There is no more toilet paper! Oh, the horror! Only the cold, brown tube remains, mocking your hilarious dilemma. Eyeing to and fro looking for any possible solution, you begin to panic. What the hell do I do? Will someone come in and rescue me? Do I have to call my roommate to ask him to get me some toilet paper?

“Hello?

Dude! I’m in a reeeeaaallly tough spot. A really tough stinky spot to be exact!

Fortunately, I have managed to avert such a tragic situation in my suite’s bathroom thus far (knock on wood). However, sharing the same two toilets with ten other guys can mean a trip to the bathroom one would want to forget at any given moment. I shudder at the thought of it ever occurring.

In a perfect world, people would willingly pay me five dollars every time they visited LonePlacebo. Since philanthropy can often be contagious, that same visitor would willingly fork over an additional two dollars for every page view and an additional buck for viewing an embedded Youtube video.

If you want to make money running a website or blog, convention says that one of the most reliable methods is to display advertisements on your web pages. One useful tool for accomplishing this task is Google’s popular Google AdSense. Unfortunately as a WordPress.com user, I am locked out of the luxuries and riches that come with Google AdSense.

The fine people at WordPress smartly concluded that such basic people like me could not be trusted with the opportunity to make money and created a barrier in the form of WordPress.org. Worst of all, they restricted the use of javascript (I have no idea what javascript is exactly beyond the fact that it’s anything that moves fanatically on a web page, but it makes me feel smart when I use that word. You should try it too sometimes!)

Thus, if you possess a self-hosted WordPress blog, then I am not your friend. On the other hand, those of you who must painfully suffer like me as they try to spell out their ridiculously long “yourdomainname.wordpress.com” url to your hilarious friends, then the green times ($$$) are imminent. Continue reading if you want to be rich. Don’t press read more if you are too rich already.